Monday, February 22, 2016

Project Batteries: Finished

The longest and most exhausting hardware "project" I've ever embarked on is completed. I'm referring, of course, to the mission of inspecting every Commodore Amiga, PC-compatible, and PC-laptop for leaking or dead batteries, and replacing them.

The final computer to receive attention, out of the dozens and dozens, was this plain Jane Amiga 500 with an A501 memory expansion in its "belly". The A501 provides this computer with an addition 512k of memory, as well as a real-time battery-backed clock. However, that aforementioned battery was a leaky Ni-Cd barrel that needed cutting out and replacing, which I did.

All of the computers which required a battery replacement received ordinary lithium-ion "coin" batteries. This represented a trade-off. These batteries are not rechargeable, but they are easy to swap, since I always mounted a battery-holder for them, and they do not leak acids or bases over time, but simply fade into oblivion.

Safer computers was not the only thing I had to show for having done this project, however. Since these computers were coming down from high shelves in some cases, being tested, and often disassembled to get to the motherboards, I took pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

A few also required repair, such as the Amiga 600 in the above picture.

Others got their hard drives reformatted for a fresh install of Windows 3.1, for no reason at all. Such was the case for this Commodore Select Edition 286, with 80287 co-processor!

But most of them I was just happy to see still kicking after all these years, such as this Commodore PC10-III, which was one of my first Commodore PCs. I remember using it for many years as a 64NET server for the 8-bits. Later it got PC-GEOS installed on it for productivity use.

It's good to know these computers will be safe and secure for years of new joys to come.